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They’re Eating the Cats and the Dogs and the Pets!
No, the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are not eating the cats and the dogs and the pets, according to the local police chief. As a matter of fact, they have committed no crimes at all.
No, the rumor started from a psycho-lady in nearby Canton, who was arrested for eating a cat. The story actually has nothing to do with Haitians.
Actually, the Haitians are eating the geese out of the Springfield city park, which is OK because geese poop a lot. No, the geese are being eaten in Columbus, not Springfield.
After Trump made his memorable statement in the debate, both sides suddenly became intensely interested in the culinary habits of Haitians in Springfield and its environs. But they are all missing the point. This is a classic case where Trump should be taken figuratively not literally.
It doesn’t matter whether pets are being eaten in Springfield or any other town. It doesn’t matter whether the exotic gastronomes are Haitian immigrants or psycho-ladies. What matters is the incredible disruption that 20,000 Haitians, whom the federal government sent to Springfield, Ohio (pop. 58,000), are causing.
Haitians eating the pets in Springfield, Ohio, is a synecdoche for the disruption to social services, crime, schools, housing, employment, municipal finances, and ordinary life caused by the 15 million illegal aliens dumped in America by the Biden-Harris administration. Trump merely put it in memorable terms that everyone can understand.
Published in Immigration
You get 10 points for being correct, and a 3-point bonus for using that word.
Mrs. Hardy, who taught my 12-grade English class, would be proud of me for remembering that figure of speech.
This was where I learned that word. If you haven’t seen it, it’s quite an experience. Be prepared to have to think about it for a while afterward.
But to the point of the post: you said it exactly and perfectly. And synecdoche is exactly what it is.
And it has apparently worked. More people (than just John Derbyshire) are now talking about what actually happens when you combine multiple cultures irresponsibly, with no thought to any part of all that we know from reading history and studying human nature. You get mostly chaos, destruction, strife, and violence. (Not to mention dead cats.)
And yes, it certainly does sometimes have to do with race, as well as every other kind of difference between peoples – which is the point – but it has little to nothing to do with racism.
Derbyshire’s idea (if I have him right) is that cultural mixing can only work if it’s on a maximum of roughly 90/10. 90% dominant existing culture and at absolute most 10% new incoming culture. And even that has to then hold for a while while the 10% adjusts to the realities of their new situation and assimilates. 10% means there are not enough of them to establish a beachhead and then attempt to “coexist” within the host culture, which will lead to endless strife. They will instead adopt most of the ways of their host culture, in order to survive, while hopefully lending a bit of their own culture into the mix, keeping the host culture healthy and interesting. This is the way to grow a healthy garden, a healthy forest, and healthy human cultures.
The only reason this crazy induced mass migration we are experiencing has not already long since been stopped by the natural reaction of a people being invaded, the reaction of State governments, and regional governments, and local governments, and social organizations, and finally individual people, when they are threatened, is that the powers that are effecting all this, whoever it is behind the Obama and now the Biden administrations, have made it essentially illegal to complain about or notice what is happening right before our eyes.
Maybe this BS has finally met a tipping point by President Trumps remarks.
Scott Adams, as usual, has an excellent insight when he describes Trump as “directionally correct” on this matter.
(sin-EK-doh-kee. I’m obsessed with the pronunciation thanks to the book I’m currently recording.)
Yeah, but…….people ( low-information voters) are mostly talking about how Trump and Vance repeated a stupid rumor without actually checking it out. Have you seen the memes? Yeah, a lot of folks vote on what they saw in the latest meme.
Those LIV’s and the people who “haven’t decided yet” who they are going to vote for. You know – the ones that will decide the election. It’s not us and it’s not the “woke” or radicals. It’s the “undecideds”, who make up their minds as they walk into the booth or lick the stamp on their mail-in ballot.
If you are running for president, maybe you should think about a quick Google. Or getting your minions to do that for you.
But the memes are the best part!
You’re assuming that these LIVs are getting all their information from their own media silo. In this case many just have to look out the window, go to work or hear from a relative.
Note: I said “many”; not all. And I’ll also add the caveat that some deny what their own experiences prove.
But the “cats and dogs” have gotten legs for a reason.
And I agree, this is the best meme season ever
I suspect that the virality of the memes in question increases the odds of “undecideds” finding out about, for example, …
https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1834635062278865265
Here is a tweet which encapsulates what I think we’re experiencing.
Expect those kind and generous Muslim immigrants to do a shift once they approach 15% of the local population.
The left goes on and on about how there is no truth just constructions.
That dog is biting them.
The lack of Chinatown jokes (as in, “why are there no cats in Chinatown?”) tells me that maybe the right tree is being barked up!
And don’t forget the voodoo.
It isn’t just a culture clash. It’s that the secularized, post-Christian West lacks the cultural confidence to assimilate these people. And that’s probably not a strong enough statement. Their kids go to government schools where they’re taught to hate our country and that they’re victims of the ordinary Americans around them. It’s a setup for hatred and violence.
Two Views of Immigration…the first, from a Russian Jewish woman who came to the US with her family in 1894, the second, some thoughts on what must have been the Plains Indians as the successive waves of settlers and pioneers grew larger.
You see, before ’49, if you were a Crow or an Arapaho or a Cheyenne, you might sit on a ridge and watch the schooners crawl across the empty prairie, one at a time, perhaps only a solitary train in a week. You might trade with it, or take a slap at it for devilment, to run off a few horses, but mostly you’d leave it alone, since it was doing no harm, apart from reducing the grazing along the North Platte or the Arkansas, and thinning the game a little. But the Indian just had to turn his back and ride a few miles to be in clear country which the caravans never touched, the bison herds ran free, and game abounded. There was still plenty for everyone.
It was different after ’49. A hundred thousand folk need a power of meat and wood and fodder; they must forage wide on either side of the trail, in what to them is virgin country, and wreak havoc among the buffalo and smaller game; they must strip the grazing to its roots–and it ain’t in human nature for them to think, in all that vastness, what it may mean for those few figures sitting on the ridge over yonder…but if you are those figures, Crow or Arapaho or Cheyenne, watching the torrent that was once a trickle, seeing it despoil the Plains on which you depend for life, and guess that it’s going to get bigger by the year, and that what was once a novelty is now a menace–what d’you do? Precisely what the squire in his Leicestershire acres, or his New England meadow, would do if crowds of noisy, selfish foreigners began to trek through ruining the place. Remonstrate–and when that don’t work, because the intruders can’t see what damage they’re doing, and don’t care anyway–what d’you do then? I’ll tell you; Leicestershire squire, New England farmer, Cheyenne Dog-Soldier or Kiowa Hose-Cap, you see that there’s only one thing for it: you put your paint on.
There for a moment I thought I was reading a Roger Kimball column as I immediately had to turn to the dictionary!
Try it with Nigerian Catholics or Zimbabwean Protestants. Not every day in that Ohio town will be a picnic, but things will be a lot prettier than they are now.
I actually said “metonymy” in the original version of that piece.
Switching to “synechdoche” was one reason to revise and republish it in the new book.
God Help us.
And other things equally or even more ridiculous. For example, in a previous election when I lived in Arizona, it seemed quite possible to me that the margin of victory in an election for governor could have been accounted for by people who like ice cream (Janet Napolitano – Neapolitan) more than fish (Matt Salmon).
Yep.
But run the same experiment with Nigerian Catholics, Zimbabwean Baptists, or Ugandan Anglicans, and you won’t have the same kind of drama even if every day isn’t metaphorically a picnic. And there will be some literal church picnicking too.
Let’s try a little syllogism:
A: Some Haitians practice voodoo
B: Voodoo requires animal sacrifice. . .
Draw your own conclusions.
Here’s Roger Kimball this morning in American Greatness (his regular Sunday column which is my first read every Sunday) talking about Adams’ change of heart based on this very item:
For what it’s worth, I also proclaimed on debate night, in a fit of despondency about how well I thought Harris had done compared to the train wreck I had expected, that she had won and Trump had lost; it took a while and a lot of second thoughts but I have completely reversed my opinion on that outcome. I can only hope many MAGA supporters have as well.
Perhaps most importantly, it seems like the “undecideds” mostly think Trump did better.
Another thought occcurred to me along these lines- a little over two years ago we acquired this little charmer-Winston- who has, quite literally, taken over our lives, our home and most of all our hearts. I wonder how many pet owners there are across the country who have members of their family who look something like Winston or a big rambunctious lab or a cuddly little poodle or a close friend of the family of the feline persuasion who are hearing this story – and especially President Trump’s moment we have been discussing- and decided whatever the merits I am going to believe this is happening and it is, to put it mildly, repuslive and sickening. For what it’s worth, and please see my post this afternoon on the CNN interview with JD Vance for my reasons, I happen to think there is much truth to this story. For some unfathomable reason I choose to believe President Trump and Sen. Vance over Dana Bash and CNN- but that’s just me.
And why wouldn’t you?
LOL
It is at least better than someone voting for them via a mail-in ballot.
Perhaps more than once, for each address they’ve ever lived at.